Ever since I was a kid my dreams have been crazy as hell. Last night, I had a dream where I was dropping my kid off at school, but there were people on both sides of the road standing waiting for a wedding. I see the couple and nope right out. Turning around a curb, suddenly I was in a fucking baseball stadium and rows of seats cut me off. I had to get home so I got out of my car? I’m walking down the stairs when I hear “oh, there it is!” I look up where the person was pointing to the sky. I see some rocket like thing, and assumed it was fireworks. It stopped, I hear three dreaded bomb falling noise, and then it slams into a seat a few rows down from the wedding. I hit the deck because I don’t want to die. But instead of exploding it sprays enough glitter throughout the stadium I ended up with a mouth full. Then I get out of there, call my mom, explained what happened, head to their house which is now a bunker in new York City and they refuse to believe what I went through. Then I woke up.
I have vivid dreams of places that look amazing. The best is when I can lucid dream so I can remain in the dream while being awake.
Our definition of crazy is different.
That sounds like a typical dream: a series of disconnected memories stitched together in a random assortment.
It could also be that putting it in writing doesn’t convey the absurdity of it accurately. I’ve had wild dreams that, when retold later, sound mundane.
Your experience sounds common.
dreams are a great deal more than disconnected memories stitched together in a random assortment. if you pay attention to the symbolism in the dream instead of the face value, you can get a glimpse into what you’re currently processing behind the scenes.
This for me becomes really obvious when you’re learning a new (movement) skill. For example after driving lessons or my first time skiing I spent the nights going through all the scenario’s. They also show that mice learning their way through a maze activate the same “direction” neurons in sequence of going through the maze while they dream and they think it will help in learning.
Natalie Portman, who does have an education in neuroscience, thinks dreams are just your mind getting rid of debris. That was in response to a question on her Hot Ones interview, and she didn’t seem to think it was a strong conclusion backed by broad scientific consensus or anything. Still, I found it an interesting pushback against the common idea that dreams have some deep meaning.
Your mind getting rid of debris… interesting.
I don’t know that its common, I encounter about 50/50 people thinking they’re nonsense and others getting insight from their dreams.
People, including Natalie Portman during her interview on the chicken wing youtube show Hot Ones, can have layers of motivation to dismiss their dreams as nonsense. Paying attention to the symbolism in dreams can reveal some dark and anxiety provoking truths. Or not :)
That’s the weird part - they have some stuff based on experiences, like dropping my kid off at school, and being in a baseball stadium. The missile landing looked similar to an artillery napalm round in Helldivers, but the wedding, the glitter bomb, the baseball stadium my parents in NYC, in a bunker? Yeah not exactly stuff I’m familiar with.
I remember another dream where I was being driven to school as a kid, and giant flying saucers descend from the sky and start firing green lasers into the ground. Or a time in hypnosis where I talked to an Eldritch entity consisting of an eyeball and tentacles that’s connected to all of us that is the reason we get stress headaches because we try to pull them off (yeah).
My mind is weird
I do! My dreams are typically very surreal and weird, things that would make the backrooms seem comfortable. Everything in the dream looks as real as it does in real life, too. I attribute this to me seemingly having hyperphantasia (on that famous “imagine an apple” graph, I am a 1, an apple in my head looks exactly as an apple does in real life). Last night I had this dream I was some kind of gigantic were-lobster that had wings. I couldn’t fly very far because my wings were like smallish dragonfly wings, but it was a fun (albeit weird) experience.
Smoke weed constantly for a couple months and quit cold turkey if you want some truly insane dreams.
Yeah, I sometimes have dreams that constantly change like that, I usually don’t remember them though. Some of the crazy/weird things that happen in my dreams are stuff like I randomly become or have been a woman, I’m somehow romantically involved with people I hate or that I’m in a situation where I’m surrounded by tentacles.